Cape Town – The SA Police Service (SAPS) has produced a list of complaints made by Intercape, which the long-distance bus company disputes, stating the number as incorrect.
Nevertheless, Intercape insists the numbers are “worrying”.
According to the SAPS schedule, there were only 95 cases reported by Intercape.
Although the schedule lists 95 cases, it only accounts for 53 of the 165 crimes reported by Intercape at the time the application was instituted, Intercape said in a recent court hearing.
Intercape has accused the SA Police Service of a failure to investigate criminal complaints it has opened due to the ongoing intimidation and violence allegedly orchestrated by the minibus taxi industry.
Appearing before the Makhanda High Court on Wednesday, (20 September 2023), Intercape said it has opened 165 criminal complaints, mostly in the Eastern Cape, since it launched the court application in March this year.
Intercape said there have been further incidents of violence and intimidation since then.
To date, not a single person is under arrest in respect of the crimes and no prosecutions are pending.
Intercape said the list of its complaints produced in court by SAPS was problematic considering the following:
- five relate to another complainant, Autopax
- five cases are included in the schedule twice
- of the remaining 85 cases, a large number do not form part of the schedule of crimes maintained by Intercape. A reconciliation shows that only 57 of the cases in the police schedule correspond with what Intercape lodged
- and of those 57 cases, four of them are listed as invalid cases due to the police station identified in the schedule not corresponding with the police station at which Intercape opened the case
Rather than prove that the crimes have been investigated, the contents of the SAPS schedule prove the precise opposite, Intercape argued.
First, the SAPS schedule does not address all of the crimes that Intercape has reported. In fact, it addresses less than a third of them.
It follows that, on the SAPS own version, it has failed to investigate the majority of the crimes reported by Intercape.
“This is a product of the most rudimentary errors SAPS cannot even keep an accurate record of the crimes that have been reported.
Pointing to the dysfunction, Intercape concluded: With these failures in record keeping, meaningful investigation is impossible.
A total of 22 cases were referred to the relevant Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP), but most were sent back to police for further investigation.
As matters stand and as a direct consequence of the SAPS failure to investigate there is not a single prosecution pending in respect of any of the crimes, Intercape said.
The company also criticised the polices failure to investigate the cases as organised crime.
[The Schedule] reveals an abject failure to understand these crimes as part of a coordinated campaign of organised crime, said Intercape.
There is no dispute this is a case of organised crime, established overwhelmingly based on the evidence.
“The acts of violence and intimidation experienced by Intercape are not random.”
Intercape said the criminality was part of an organised scheme by taxi operators, who have demanded that long-distance bus operators increase their prices.
Taxi operators have also demanded a limit of buses operating on particular routes, amended timetables to ensure that all buses depart Eastern Cape towns before noon daily, and a stop of operations in certain towns.
The aim of these attacks is to drive long-distance bus operators out of certain parts of the country, thus enabling taxi operators to monopolise those areas,” said Intercape.
“This self-evidently forms a pattern of racketeering activity and constitutes organised crime, as contemplated in the Prevention of Organised Crime Act 121 of 1998 (POCA).
“Intercape claims the police sought to deny the undeniable by claiming there is no evidence of organised crime.
Intercape also called on the Directorate for Priority Crime Investigation (DPCI or Hawks) to investigate the cases of violence and intimidation.
There is a concerted campaign of violence and intimidation, with a particular objective to intimidate and coerce bus operators to accede to the demands of the taxi industry, the long-distance bus company said.
It is for the police to bring their specialist skills and expertise to bear on the investigation of crimes.
Organised crime is one such area where the best skills of the police services need to be employed to find evidence of the link between individual events that have, as their common theme, a pattern of extortion to secure a particular players position in a market.
